FAU Digital Tech Fellows Program


Be Part of Something Unique!

The Digital Tech Academy is FAU’s Elite Entrepreneurship program open to outstanding innovative talents from all FAU degree programs and faculties! We impart all you need to follow your heart and passion for digitization, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Work in interdisciplinary teams, get in touch with expert coaches and mentors, develop your own pristine and validated business model for your start-up and get integrated in our Digital Tech Fellows and start-up network & community.

Check out DTF Batch# 8 Movie!

 

What are the benefits of the DTF Program?

Within a 12 weeks sprint, you will

  • learn the latest state-of-the-art innovation methods
  • work in interdisciplinary teams on your entrepreneurial challenge
  • choose either your own start-up idea or one of the highly enticing projects from the other participants
  • work with 20 other handpicked talents from FAU and our international expert coaches and mentors from former Batches
  • widen your professional & personal network
  • receive an official FAU certificate upon successfull completion of the program

There is no place you can’t learn something for your start-up!

  • The DTF Program was an invaluable experience for me. Meeting all these talented and creative people from different backgrounds was amazing. This program provided me with a new perspective to see the world and myself. I discovered some potential in myself that I never knew I had, which helped me make new career plans for myself: build my own business. I highly recommend the DTF Program to anyone who wants to develop professionally and personally 🙂

    Baihui Liu: Co-Founder of SafetyNet // B#9

  • In the DTF program we were a really inspiring group of people with amazing ideas. I am so glad that I was part of this and had the opportunity to work on innovative ideas with like-minded peers. Before DTA, I was just interested in start-ups, but could never imagine founding one. I am really grateful for this opportunity.

    Moritz Kraus: Fullstack Software Engineer @ itestra // B#9

  • The DTF programme is a place to discover your new self. Whether you end up being an entrepreneur or not, DTF offers you tremendous opportunities to grow as a person and find like-minded people. Come and see for yourself that DTF is the place where miracles happen.

    Oleksandra Derikova: IT Business Analyst @ Accenture // B#8

  • The DTA program embodies the type of experience that international students aspire to engage in alongside our academic pursuits. Through workshops, extraordinary coaches, team-building activities, and enlightening startup discussions, we delved deeply into the entrepreneurial journey. The insights and skills I acquired from the DTA program not only contribute to my personal growth but also represent enduring knowledge for a lifetime. 🙂

    Divya Mittal : (workstudent) Project Management @ Siemens Healthineers // B#9

  • The DTA was my first point of contact with the topic of founding and the startup ecosystem in general. Through workshops, mentoring and networking, you get the tools you need to give it a try yourself. Even if the innovative ideas don’t always turn into long-lasting startups, the time at the DTA awakens an entrepreneurial spirit in many. As a result, I am still firmly connected to the topic of startups, live out this passion in further projects and am convinced that even founding a company is still a potential future for me.

    Bastian Heinrich: Consultant Tech Strategy @ OMMAX // B#7

  • My journey in Batch 9 of the DTA has been truly transformative. It’s like holding the keys to the future of tech and innovation. This program isn’t just a course; it’s a catalyst for innovation, refining my skills with hands-on training and invaluable mentorship. The knowledge, skills, and network I’ve gained are shaping my future, making DTA not just a program but a game-changer. Don’t miss your chance to join this incredible ride!

    Naveen Narasapura Narasimhappa: Master student – Artificial Intelligence @ FAU // B#9

  • I found my true talent in Marketing throughout the entire program, where each step motivated me to learn new things and to passionately love what our team is developing. I am grateful for the great community in the program who eagerly pushed through new challenges and yet still contributed to a happy and supportive working atmosphere.

    Yupita Atuna: Master student – Standard of Decision Making across Cultures @ FAU // B#10

  • The DTA program was a fantastic opportunity to gain an introduction to the startup world, especially for someone in medicine with zero business experience. The best part was, of course, the people – along with the skills and backgrounds they brought with them

    Kaan Türkan: Medical student @FAU // B#10

 

What are the projects and objectives?

You can work either on your own start-up idea, or join a start-up idea from another participant – after the program you will have:
+ a validated Business Model
+ a validated Market Potential
+ a validated Financial Plan
+ defined / work in progress prototypes

What happens during this 12 weeks Sprint?

We will guide you through the end-to-end Business Design process and help you understand and figure out if you have the entrepreneur in YOU!

Get to know your Digital Tech Fellows, choose your start-up idea and assemble your interdisciplinary team. After the Kick-off weekend you will be fully set-up to start your entrepreneurial journey with the DTA.

In order to understand the holistic impact of your choosen start-up idea, eight discovery areas are being researched, e.g. to understand the world of a potential client, research the competition, etc.

 

In this workshop we dive deep into market and competitor analysis to create a great foundation for our future business model. On top of that we go through the best techniques and ways how to interview potential customers & users.

Using the discovered insights, several new business ideas are developed, prioritized and first drafted into a value proposition followed by a complete business model. Then Hypothese & Experiments are defined to validate the choosen business model. For validation different prototypes such as landing pages, videos, and mock-ups are created. Besides that we will spend a whole weekend in a nice location together and have lot’s of FUN 🙂

Throughout the validation phase, which serves to verify our business model with the help of different experiments and prototypes, we check in with each other and use the first generated insights to define a lean version of our future offering.

During the Pitching workshop we will cover the different types of pitches and learn how to best present our start-up idea.

In the review workshop we take a trip down memory lane and review the whole process and our developments together. We discuss which next steps we will take to further validate our Business model.

The financial modeling workshop will teach you everything you need to know about investment planning, cost planning & price calculation. At the end you will have a clear picture what your product or service is worth and how to calculate the numbers.

The final Demo Day marks the official end of the program, where all team pitch their start-up ideas to a large audience and share their next steps and plans for the future with us. Afterwards it’s time for our award ceremony and most importantly time to celebrate our Digital Tech Fellows with the rest of our DTA Community.


We also have our DTA Start-ups from the previous batches coming and sharing their journey & advice with the upcoming entrepreneurs.


  • arfinity
    Lucia Grom-Baumgarten from our DTF B#3 Start-up arfinity sharing their journey since participating in the Digital Tech Fellows Program back in 2018. Arfinity brings Augmented Reality to the world of trade fairs by enabling completely new ways of product presentation and interaction,  which eventually offer significant value for all stakeholders at trade fairs. In an easy and cost-efficient configuration tool, exhibitors can create their own AR content and showcase a bigger portfolio in the form of true-to-original 3D-models during events.



  • Oculai
    Constantin & Tim from our Batch#6 Start-up Oculai joined us as mentors for Batch#8 during the Design Weekend and shared great insights on how to grow fast and what not to underestimate when going all in with your start-up. Oculai offers a solution for camera-based data collection on construction sites. Intelligent computer vision algorithms extract data on resource utilization, construction performance and construction progress from image material. This automates time-consuming documentation and reveals productivity deficits in individual processes at an early stage.


  • Libati
    Katrin & Doro from our Batch#4 Start-up Libati shared helpful validation advice with our Digital Tech Fellows. They show the different mock-ups and prototypes they started out with and how long it took to have their final app (which is of course always work-in-progress) today.Libati offers an App for the chronically ill people to discover new places more freely and independently. The user simply creates his personal trigger factors and preferences like stairs, pet hair etc. at the beginning and sees at a glance which locations around him/her are suitable and which are not. The input is based on the ratings of other users.


  • INVRTUAL
    Markus, Spyros and Michi from our DTF B#4 Start-up INVRTUAL shared their journey of starting a start-up next to studying with our fellows. Their Do’s & Don’ts when starting a business were really helpful for our Digital Tech Fellows.INVRTUAL’s mission is to redefine the way people collaborate in the virtual space. With our XR communication platform, we enable a variety of customer-centric applications ranging from virtual training to product presentation.


The DTA Alumni Network was founded in 2021 by Digital Tech Fellows from Batches #3-#7 and organizes regular on- and offline events to bring the continuously growing DTA community (150+ Fellows) together. Past events include: Metaverse – the new Normal? with FAU President Prof. Joachim Hornegger & Prof. Benedikt Morschheuer ; Do’s & Don’ts in Innovation with ITONICS CEO Christian Mühlroth & Online Event: How to rock your Linkedin Profile with Eva Wittenzellner from Linkedin

The 1. FAU Start-up Demo Day took place in September 2022. The goal was to determine the FAU Start-up which will travel to the EELISA-wide European Start-up Demo Day in Pisa in December of 2022. We are super proud that our DTF B#8 Start-up Evolonic was selected as the winner. More info here

The yearly recurring Franken Finance Festival is a full day filled with talks and workshops on all forms of equity and dept financing opportunitites for your start-up endevaours. Of course also a great way to network with liked-minded entrepreneurship enthusiasts. Check out Franken Finance Festival 2022

The HACK| Bay is a 2 day hackathon organized by the Zollhof- Tech Incubator. Get together as a team, work on cool company challenges and most importantly have a great time and connect with others.

The Digital Tech Summit is another great hackathon & conference organized by our friends at Zollhof Tech-Incubator. Join a team and challenge by the corporate partners such as Adidas, Schäffler or Nürnberger Versicherung and spend 2 days with many other innovation enthusiasts and tech lovers. Fun fact: The last DTS took place at the Max-Morlock-Stadium of the 1.FC Nürnberg. Stay tuned for the next DTS. Check out the last DTA here

Our Ideators meets Co-Creator event aimed to bring start-ups looking for employees together with people interested to gain some experience by working at a start-up. The event took place at the JOSEPHS – the open innovation lab and was super successfull with more than 20 start-ups and over 100 participants. Currently planning the next event. Stay tuned.

In March and September 0f 2019 we were able to take a trip to Silicon Valley together with other FAU students, employees & professors and company representatives and explore the innovation ecosystem there. We took trips to the Amazon Warehouse, Facebook, Google and also met a former Tesla manager, visited local start-up incubators and also learned from start-up founders ther!. 5 Digital Tech Fellows from B#3 and B#4 got a full paid scholarship for the trip. It was an amazing experience!

The Shenzen Fall School took place in September of 2019 and also aimed to connect FAU students, employees, professors and company representative with our partners from the Peking University Shenzen Graduate School. It was an amazing trip.

Our regular Digital Tech Academy Community events serve to bring our great community of Digital Tech Fellows together and have fun, such as during our Christmas parties, the Erlanger Bergkirchweih and many other opportunities. Of course meeting for sports activites is just as much fun, for example at the Ninja Warrior Gym or for a Yoga session 🙂

 

On top of that you will get a complete overview of FAU’s great innovation ecosystem!

Your Application for the FAU Digital Tech Fellows Program

This was B#10! Application for B#11 is now closed. Application for DTF B#12 will open in October 2025! 

 

 

Please find here the full program and schedule of Batch #11: 

Name of the Event

 Date Venue Time
Kick-off Weekend 25.04.2025 – 27.04.2025 D.hip 9 am to 5 pm
DTA Community Event 26.04.2025 D.hip 5-9pm (optional)
Competitor Analysis and Interview Techniques Workshop 29.04.2025 Online 5-8pm
Discover Deep Dive 09.05.2025 D.hip 1 pm to 5pm
Design Workshop 29.05.2025 – 31.05.2025 Forschungscampus

Waischenfeld

(Transportation & Accomodation included)

 9 am to 5 pm
Pitching Workshop 06.06.2025 D.hip 10 am to 4pm
DTA goes BERG 06.06.2025 Bergkirchweih Erlangen 6pm (optional)
Validate Workshop 13.06.2025 D.hip 10 am to 5 pm
Financial Modelling Workshop 30.06.2025 Online 5 pm to 8 pm
Review Workshop 04.07.2025 D.hip 1 pm to 6 pm
Pitch Test I 09.07.2025 Online Individual
Pitch Test II 14.07.2025 Medical Valley Center Erlangen Individual
Final Demo Day 18.07.2025 D.hip 9 am to 5 pm
DTA Celebration 18.07.2025 D.hip 5-10pm